My mother calls me this morning and says, \u201cWhat should I do with suitcases filled with books of your grandfather?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some he had\nwritten. Some he had compiled from his inspiration from books he never stopped\nreading. He read till the time he lived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I ask my mother to\nship the suitcases to me. I will be honored if I can compile a little of my grandfather\nin a book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And here I am\ntyping this. She called me his true descendent because I write, just like him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn\u2019t always\nwrite though. But I remember how it all began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The year was 1993\nin a small, pristine, and untouched town called Kapurthala of Punjab, India. I\nwas a confused teenager, involved in petty issues of Walkman breaking down and taking\nfrom me my music, stuff that in the grand scheme of things means nothing but to\na teenager, it was my world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, the summer\nof 1993 was in full swing. The ground was burning, the heat was rising in fumes\nand drenching us in sweat. Shahrukh Khan<\/em> had hit big in Bollywood by\nplaying negative roles in Baazigar<\/em> and Darr<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I biked to and\nfrom Christ King Convent School run by nuns when my hair barely hit my shoulders\nand my classmates had fancy nicknames to describe my weird hair and weird me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a society run by men, it was then Gill Mam, our English teacher in perfectly tailored Salwar Kameez <\/em>and immaculate makeup, had the audacity to stand tall in our classroom and suggest we write down our thoughts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh, boy was that a\nscary proposition for teenagers filled with dark thoughts, nightmares of failing–not\nmaking it in the boards or in the entrance exams to colleges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I took her advice.\nI had my grandfather\u2019s genes. But I was still not ready to lay bare what\ntwirled in my head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, I hid behind\nmetaphors and abstracts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am pissed at how\ncrowded the movie theatre was became \u201ca day filled with purple and violet hews\nat the movie theatre.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am disgusted at having to defend against inappropriate touching in public buses where the men went out on scavenger hunt on the still-alive females. In my diary that became it was an interesting and rocking ride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being a female in\nIndia is daunting. Being a father of two girls, even more so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Society turned my\nfather into an angry man who was always ready to punch, yell at the unwanted\nleering advances from strange men at railway stations, at shopping center. His\nfrown didn\u2019t leave his forehead when we were out. We became unwilling spectators\nof him defending us. We grew up, moved out, went away from our little town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a teenager, all\nthese thoughts never made it into my journals. It remained as hews, tints, odors,\nshapes of clouds, rumbling of thunder, gurgle of rain\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, here I am letting\nmy heart bleed. My grandfather is no more, but he carries on in our spirits, in\nour words. And, the injustices of the world keep the pen moving, trying to make\nthe world a more equal, a fairer place for all hearts with diverse faces who must\nlive in one world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No longer hiding behind abstracts. I am in the thick of it now. Writing goes on. It will die with me as it did for my grandfather.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recalling when I started writing. And, now it is a part of me that beats from inside out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3],"tags":[193,192,191,80,26],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bookofdreams.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/hands-600497_1920.jpg?fit=1920%2C1281&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kaFb-j2","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookofdreams.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookofdreams.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookofdreams.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookofdreams.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookofdreams.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1180"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bookofdreams.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2074,"href":"https:\/\/bookofdreams.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions\/2074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookofdreams.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookofdreams.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookofdreams.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookofdreams.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}